About us

We are the Data Research and Innovation Team at the UK Data Service – an internationally respected coalition of social science data repositories, including the UK Data Archive in Colchester, where the team is based.

Our expertise is drawn from the Big Data Network Support team, previously part of the ESRC funded BDN2 project and from developers and data modellers who have worked in a number of diverse arenas, ranging from climate data to natural language processing to social sciences survey analysis.

Capitalising on this breadth of experience, our mission over the next three years is to challenge conventional wisdom about what data repositories can deliver by leveraging the rapidly evolving opportunities afforded by “big data” tools and infrastructure, while retaining the best of current repository practice: trustworthiness, rich metadata, security and provenance. We aim to deliver increased societal and economic impact, not only by unlocking the value that is in our current social science data holdings but by enabling seamless and secure linkage with data sets from other domains like energy and biomedical.

As well as expanding the horizons of the traditional data repository, DSaaP has been selected as the infrastructure that will underpin the EPSRC funded Smart Meter Research Portal project – an exciting five year project in conjunction with University College London – to collate smart meter data from potentially millions of households for analysis by energy researchers.